Serbia Eurovision 2018 odds

At the end of February, the national competition of Serbia designated a group whose objective is to bring back to the taste of the day the traditional music of the country.

After nine years, the Serbian representative was again elected by both the jury and the public. The SMS votes accounted for half of the points, the second half came from the music experts. The group won the selection competition as they received 12 points from both the jury and the televote. Their competitors, Saska Jankovic and Dusan Svilar, ended up second and third with ten and seven points respectively for their acts.

In the space of three minutes, Sanja Ilic and the Balkanika formation offer us with the title “Nova deca” a clever mix of medieval Serbian sounds and more modern tones. The cocktail, rather successful, will have to convince the televiewers and the professional jurors of the 63rd edition of the Eurovision contest in May in Portugal. The composer Sanja Ilic created Balkanika 20 years ago with the aim of giving a new breath to the music of his country.

The revamped version features slight changes in the instrumentation. This version leans more electronic, with more prominent and modern beats. The female vocals seem to represent the traditional element of the song, giving it its strong Balkan identity.

Balkanika is actually a music collective that consists of twelve members, five singers and seven instrumentalists. However, due to the Eurovision rules, which do no allow more than six people on stage, only half of them will be performing in Lisbon.

Earlier this month, Sanja Ilic & Balkanika travelled to Porto to film their Eurovision postcard, which will, as all the others, follow the theme Meet Portugal.

Serifovic, yet Serbia’a only winner, had already expressed her displeasure with Beovizija 2018, and stuck to her opinion this time as well. “Beovizija looked a bit scary, a bit funny, a bit bizarre to me. I really believe that in this country we have fifteen decent singers that should compete there and fifteen decent authors that can write fifteen decent songs for those artists.”

“Sanja Ilic and Balkanika definitely were the best that night. The only act that really made sense there. […] The only question here is what kind of selection those songs had passed through. What was the criteria?” she added.

Balkanika band, who has recently visited Bosnia & Herzegovina talked to Bosnian website Klix about their Eurovision journey. "We have prepared ourselves and invested a lot of effort in the song for it to to be top quality, we did the best we could. We are satisfied with the reaction. What will happen at the Eurovision is not known, but we will do our best. As they say, if you do not win, it is irrelevant in which place you have ended, "says Sanja Ilic. "We want the song to be the main focus of the performance and everything will be adapted to it, we have designed a choreography, we have a good song, three wonderful vocals and we will do the best we can. If our wishes come true, which depends on finances, we will be fantastic", said Aleksandar Radulovic.

Odds on Eurovision Song Contest 2018: Will Serbia qualify for the final?